Regardless of the time and money invested in cybersecurity, the threat of attacks and data breaches has only intensified for organizations. Cybercriminals are using more sophisticated and innovative methods to bypass security measures. According to the Check Point 2023 Security Report, cyberattacks increased by 38% in 2022 compared to the previous year, with an average of 1,168 weekly attacks against organizations. And cybercriminals aren’t just targeting corporations, but also financial institutions, healthcare providers, and government agencies.
In addition to the business disruption, impact on revenue, and reputational damage caused by system downtime and the loss of data, organizations face the growing cost of cybersecurity solutions and insurance. There’s enormous pressure on IT leaders with limited resources to improve security and data protection. What else can IT leaders do to mitigate risk for organizations?
According to Gartner, the answer to mitigating the impact of cyber threats is “digital immunity.” In this article, we'll discuss Gartner's concept of digital immunity and explore why it's important for software developers.
What is a Digital Immune System?
In order to understand digital immunity, you first need to understand what a digital immune system is.
According to Gartner, "a digital immune system (DIS) is a set of technologies and processes that help an organization protect its information and systems from continual attack and exploit."
In other words, a DIS is a system that helps protect your organization from cyberattacks. It does this by allowing your organization to identify and respond to threats promptly and effectively.
What is Driving the Need for Digital Immunity?
So what's driving the need for digital immunity? There are a few factors at play.
To start, our world is becoming increasingly more connected. With more devices and systems interacting with each other, the potential for cyberattacks and other infrastructure incidents is multiplying. As businesses and consumers become more reliant on digital systems, the stakes are getting higher.
At the same time, the number of software developers is exploding with the global developer population expected to reach 28.7 million people by 2024, an increase of 3.2 million from 2020 according to Statista. As the world becomes more and more digitally dependent, there's an increasing demand for developers who can create safe and reliable software. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts a 25% increase in job openings for software developers, QA analysts, and testers to 2031. Since no software is 100% error-free, software development teams need to be prepared for the inevitable glitches and vulnerabilities that will surface in their code.
That's where digital immunity comes in. By ensuring your website or app has a healthy digital immune system, you can mitigate the impact of cyberattacks on your business operations.
Why is Digital Immunity Important to Software Development Teams?
Gartner defines digital immunity as "the ability of an organization to protect and sustain its operations in the event of a cyberattack." In other words, it's your organization's ability to maintain business as usual in the face of a cyberattack or incident.
Software development teams (and, more broadly, DevOps teams) play an active role in protecting and boosting their organization's digital immune system. They're tasked with creating a robust defense strategy that will keep systems up and running no matter what.
Digital immunity is essential for software development teams because it impacts their ability to do their jobs. It's also essential because it protects the data and infrastructure of the organizations they work for.
How to Achieve a Healthy Digital Immune System
So now that you know what a digital immune system is, how can you get one? Here are some tips to ensure your software application is well protected:
Automate code changes to detect potential risks quickly.
Increase code coverage by testing for areas you may not have previously tested.
Make sure test scenarios cover the full range of user workloads, including peak usage times or sudden increases in demand.
Leverage APIs and microservice architectures to make code and application updates more manageable and secure.
Implement automated security testing to validate the safety and security of your applications.
Use continuous performance testing to ensure there is no degradation in performance when deploying new software releases.
Additionally, by leveraging an automated testing solution like Sauce Labs, you can streamline your security and quality assurance processes for a more secure development lifecycle.
How Does Digital Immunity Connect to Software Quality?
Digital immunity ultimately increases the quality of the software by increasing the speed and accuracy of software releases. As Gartner puts it, “the ultimate goal is to guarantee—through automation—that software and systems are always ‘immunized’ against bugs and vulnerabilities as soon as they are developed or released.”
By automating the testing process, we can detect and eliminate any issues or errors with the software from a usability, security, and performance standpoint. And while manual testing can be slow and costly, automation allows us to find bugs quickly and effectively without having to sacrifice quality.
Moreover, automated testing also provides tangible data that can be used to inform decisions concerning future development and improvements, as you can track progress over time. Sauce Labs' automated testing platform helps your organization create a rapid feedback loop that keeps your software healthy while also driving business performance.
How Can Sauce Labs Help Organizations Achieve Digital Immunity?
When it comes to building a great website or mobile app, testing is just as important as coding. But with digital immunity, testing takes on a whole new importance. And this is where Sauce Labs can help.
Sauce Labs offers a platform of continuous testing solutions to help organizations quickly identify potential risks and vulnerabilities in their applications before they become an issue. Not only do we ensure our platform supports the latest mobile devices, operating systems, browsers, and emulators and simulators, but we also take the security of our own platform very seriously.
